The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (20 page)

“Annnnd?”

“And that's it. We had an awkward train ride home. Another one this morning. And everything since has been just that: extremely awkward.”

“But,” Samira butts in, “she didn't say she didn't love you.”

I stare at her. “I think it was pretty well implied.”

She shakes her head. “No. Maybe you caught her off guard. Maybe she needs time to think.”

I shake my head back at her, but luckily I'm saved from having to give a response because we've reached the front of the line and are now being ushered behind the black curtain, where Aaron Dunning is having photos taken. That's good, because I have no response.

Samira tells the girl who takes her receipt that she wants both of us
to be in the photo. I ask her if she's sure and she says yes.

Aaron says hello to us and shakes our hands. He gives Samira a “How are you doing?” and a smile, which makes her blush furiously. Though not as much as when he puts his arm around her shoulder while they take the photo. I only notice this a few minutes later when we go to pick up the finished product. Samira looks about the same color as Aaron's artfully draped tomato-red scarf, but she doesn't even seem to notice. She looks so flushed and happy that I have to grin.

“When's your next big event?” I ask her.

“The fan fiction panel is at two,” she replies.
Maybe I'll accompany her to that, too,
I think.

On our way to the DC display to meet the others, we pass by the Sun Auctions booth again. I look at my watch. The auction starts in a few hours.

As we come up to the glass case, I can't help staring at the small Zinc display, where, I swear, my page glows like it's a prop from
Indiana Jones
. All my plans, everything I so meticulously plotted to make happen—gone in a stupid instant. Alcohol sucks. I'm never drinking again.

I guess I've come to a full stop in front of the display, because that's where Felicia and Casey find us, and Casey immediately sees what I'm looking at.

“Do you think you're still going to buy it?” he asks, and I stare at the physical manifestation of my erstwhile hopes and dreams.

“I wish I could turn back time,” I respond.
Like Rewinder,
I privately
think. Only I would go back a whole day, not forty-five minutes. So like a matured Rewinder, then—one who is in full possession of her powers.

“What are you talking about?” Felicia asks lightly.

“Oh. Graham was going to buy that for Roxana,” Casey blurts out in his usual blunt way, pointing at the page.

Both girls peer into the case. “Whoa!” Felicia says. “Five hundred dollars for a piece of paper?”

“No, it's five hundred dollars to start,” Casey corrects. “It'll probably go for a few thousand at least.”

Felicia steps closer, and I realize she's reading the pages. “Oh,” she says quietly after a moment. “I see.”

I know she doesn't know much about Althena, but I guess she gets the gist of what's going on between Althena and Noth there—especially considering she's probably written twenty-page analytical English papers about, like, Tolstoy. I hear a soft “Awwwww” escape from under Samira's breath and I realize she's read it now too.

Well, at least now I know it
was
a good plan.

I slowly start to walk away, and the rest follow my lead. Felicia catches up to me. “How were you ever going to pay for it, Graham?” she asks tentatively, and I get that she's trying to tread carefully on a very delicate situation.

I guess it doesn't matter if I tell her now. “Casey was going to lend me the money.” I shrug. “I was going to get a job and pay him back.”

Felicia smiles. “That's sweet,” she says, and then pauses before she finishes her sentence, “but, you know, Roxana wouldn't have wanted you to do that. . . .”

“Yeah, that's true,” Samira, who is now flanking me on the other side, agrees. “She's too practical sometimes.”

I blink rapidly. So what are the girls trying to tell me? That I was doomed to fail no matter what?

It's too raw and fresh to feel okay about that now, but maybe that's a kindness on their part. Maybe it'll help me stop blaming myself . . . someday.

As we head toward the Batmobile parked in the distance, my heart stutters at the sight of the short-haired girl and her tall British companion waiting there for us. I think that day may be very far away.

WE SPEND SOME TIME AT
the DC display, looking at the movie props. When I get to Michael Keaton's Batman costume, I feel compelled to text Amelia a picture.

Look. It's your man's threads
, I write.

Swoon!
she writes back a few moments later.

One of DC's star writers is doing a signing, and a huge line winds around and around the glass cases, so it's a little hard to get close to some of the other displays. I nearly mow down a guy with a fauxhawk and glasses standing beside one of the cases, looking a bit forlornly at the writer greeting his fans. I'm guessing he wasn't able to
get a ticket himself. Yesterday, I would have known exactly how he feels. Today, I am so beyond that.

Afterward, the six of us wander the show floor for a while, one or another of us browsing various kiosks and booths. Samira buys an
Adventure Time
T-shirt, and it's while we're waiting to pay that I notice a small brunette girl enthusiastically waving at me from the booth across the aisle. I squint, and it takes me a moment to recognize her. It's Louisa, my lovelorn counterpart from speed dating, the one who was sort of stalking her ex-boyfriend. I smile and wave back.

She's holding hands with a short, slightly chubby guy who is clutching a sheet of paper and raising his hand in the air while he stares intently at the guy behind the booth. His back is to me, so I feel comfortable mouthing my question to Louisa.
Your ex?

A slow blush creeps across her face and she sends me an almost guilty grin in return as she shakes her head.
Speed dating,
she mouths back, adding a helpless shrug.

I laugh and then look at the two of them again. After a moment, there's a round of applause and I hear the guy behind the booth point to Louisa's new dude and say, “You are the winner of this round of trivia. Pick your prize!”

He turns to Louisa and smiles triumphantly. “You pick.” She beams at him and I watch as she selects a small, plush Ninja Turtle. Then she hugs him, her laughing eyes meeting mine over his shoulder.

She certainly doesn't look like the tortured person I met two days
ago . . . but I bet I do. I bet I look exactly the same.

I smile at her anyway and give her a thumbs-up and a friendly wave by way of good-bye. She does the same, and then I turn back around, trudging after my friends and the albatross I haven't been as lucky as Louisa to shake off.

About ten minutes later, as Samira is debating whether to go to a
Star Wars
origami panel that starts soon, Devin turns to Roxana and me. “Hey, don't you guys have your critique session soon? From that Breaking into Comics panel?”

“Oh, right,” Roxana says vaguely. “That.”

I stare at her. So that's it, then. All our years of working on
Misfits
together has been boiled down to “that”? How could I not see how right Roxana was about everything changing? How could I have been so stupid as to believe this could ever work between us?

“I can take Samira to the origami panel,” Felicia volunteers.

“Me too,” Casey says, and I can't help but stare at him incredulously, knowing full well the origami panel is not filling up a cell in his spreadsheet.

“Sam, is that okay?” Roxana asks.

“Sure.” Samira nods. “The panel ends at one fifteen. When will you guys be done?”

“Um . . . I think our slot was at twelve forty-five,” Roxana says. “And it's only fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, so meet you a little after one fifteen?” Felicia asks. “Maybe at the food court?”

They all agree and finalize our plans, and no one seems to notice that this whole time, I haven't said a word. They can decide my immediate future. Hell, if they want, they can decide my distant future, too. Nothing is in my control anyway, why bother pretending it is? Why not leave everything up to everyone else's whims?

The group breaks up, and I straggle behind Devin and Roxana as they head toward the critique room. But when we get near the escalators, Devin stops. “I'm actually going to go check out the Adam Hughes signing. Meet you at one fifteen also?”

“Oh,” Roxana says, clearly taken aback. “Sure.”

Devin smiles and quickly squeezes her shoulder. “See you soon,” he says as he hops on the escalator.

We watch his tall form drift away from us, I think both hit with the uncomfortable realization that we're finally alone together again. Well, alone in a sea of thousands. Which, surprisingly, is still really awkward.

We do a sort of weird dance as we walk toward the panel room, neither one of us quite wanting to walk next to the other, but feeling like it's too weird to walk too far apart, either.

Finally, as we're only a few steps from the room, Roxana breaks the silence. “So, are you nervous?”

About what? Us? Last night? I look down at her blankly.

“You know, getting workshopped by Donnelly and Park.” She reads my confused expression correctly and clarifies.

Oh, right. That. “Sure,” I say even though, truthfully, I haven't
given it a single thought since the moment we dropped our pages off yesterday.

“I wonder what they'll think,” she says as we enter the room.

“Yeah. Me too.”

And then, allowing myself to concentrate for just a moment on what's about to happen, I realize that I
am
nervous about it. We worked really hard on those panels and that issue in particular, revising and rewriting it a few times. I know objectively that it's some of Roxana's best work. But it's almost impossible to ever be that objective about my own work. I wonder if it really and truly is any good.

An NYCC staffer comes over and makes sure our names are on her clipboard. She tells us to take a seat and we'll get called up. “They're pretty much running on schedule, so they should be seeing you between twelve forty-five and twelve fifty,” she tells us.

We sit down in one of the rows of chairs that are still set up panel-style and watch from far away as Morgan Donnelly and Brandon Park animatedly speak to a guy with a ponytail about his work. I tap my foot nervously; Roxana touches her hair. Things are otherwise quiet between us.

“Graham?”

I turn around and see Amelia standing there beside another girl with short, spiky pigtails. Amelia is wearing a green jumpsuit and has dyed her left ear green. In other words, she's dressed as Althena as Ripley from
Alien
. I grin at her.

“Hey! Nice costume!” I say.

She smiles back. “This is Joanna.” She introduces her friend to Roxana and me and we murmur greetings. It's only then that I notice Amelia is clutching a few sheets of paper.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Did you get critiqued?”

Amelia nods. “Yeah, something small.” She moves the typed pages away from her chest, and I can see some scrawls on it in red pen.

“I didn't see you at their panel yesterday,” I say.

“I was at the one on Friday,” she replies.

“Ah.” I nod toward her pages. “How was it?”

She breaks out into a grin. “Nerve-wracking. But fun. They took it really seriously, and that's nice, you know. Like they were giving me actual, thoughtful critiques, not treating me like I was some fragile, dumb kid.”

“That's great!” I say, even though it's also ratcheted up my nerves.

“Did you want to go to the NYU information session? It's starting soon,” Joanna says to Amelia.

“Oh, yes,” she responds, and then turns to me again. “Maybe I'll text you later and we can all meet up?”

“Sure.” I smile back at her. She and Joanna say their good-byes and turn to leave.

A few moments later, a voice next to me finally pipes up.

“You seem chummy. You just met yesterday, right?”

What the hell? Like Roxana is one to talk.

“Um, Friday,” I say, and can't help adding, “just like you and Devin, actually.” Exactly like that, in fact.

She looks stung, and she opens and closes her mouth a few times. “I didn't mean . . . ,” she starts, but then our names are called and we find ourselves sitting side by side in front of Morgan and Brandon. I guess our body language isn't too inviting, because Morgan makes a comment.

“Don't look so defensive, guys,” he says casually. “You won't need armor for this, I promise.”

He smiles and takes out our pages, double-checking that
The Misfits of Mage High
is ours. We nod, and then the two of them start talking, both of them extolling the virtues of our work first. Morgan tells me my writing is crisp and funny and I have a good sense of comedic timing and characterization. Brandon says Roxana's art is fresh and bold and that the best part is that both the art and the writing seem to be doing equal amounts of work in moving the story along, essential in the comic world. “You guys are clearly a really great team,” Brandon says.

I try to take that for the compliment it is, instead of feeling the sting that comes with wondering if that sentence should really be in the past tense.

Then the two gently but firmly give us some suggestions on what we could improve. Morgan thinks I might want to concentrate a little more on accelerating the plot, maybe pare down some of the jokes
that might be taking up too much valuable real estate in terms of telling the story. Brandon talks a little bit about Roxana's use of color and how she might want to think about where she wants the viewer's eye to be drawn in each panel. He singles out how one particular panel lacks some focus, and gives her some advice on how she might be able to fix that.